ight of an opaque atmosphere, in the depths of
gloomy waves--when the fingers, the fins, and the wings were confounded,
and eyes without heads floated like molluscs amongst human-faced bulls
and dog-footed serpents.

"Over the whole of those beings Omoroca, bent like a hoop, stretched her
woman's body. But Belus cut her clean in two halves, made the earth with
one, and the heavens with another; and the two worlds alike mutually
contemplate each other. I, the first consciousness of chaos, I have
arisen from the abyss to harden matter, to regulate forms; and I have
taught men fishing, the sowing of seed, the scripture, and the history
of the gods. Since then, I live in the ponds that remained after the
Deluge. But the desert grows larger around them; the wind flings sand
into them; the sun consumes them; and I expire on my bed of lemon while
gazing across the water at the stars. Thither am I returning."

He makes a plunge and disappears in the Nile.

_Hilarion_--"This is an ancient god of the Chaldeans!"

_Antony_, ironically--"Who, then, were the gods of Babylon?"

_Hilarion_--"You can see them!"

And they find themselves upon the platform of a quadrangular tower
rising above other towers, which, growing narrower in proportion as they
rise, form a monstrous pyramid. You may distinguish below a great, black
mass--the city, without doubt--stretching along the plain. The air is
cold; the sky is of a sombre blue; the multitudinous stars palpitate.

In the middle of the platform stands a column of white stone. Priests in
linen robes pass and return all round, so as to describe in their
evolutions a moving circle, and, with heads raised, they contemplate the
stars.

Hilarion points out several of them to Saint Antony:

"There are thirty chief priests. Fifteen gaze upon the region above the
earth, and fifteen on the region below it. At regular intervals one of
them rushes from the upper regions to the lower, whilst another abandons
the lower to mount towards the empyrean.

"Of the seven planets, two are benevolent, two malevolent, and three
ambiguous; everything in the world depends on these eternal fires.
According to their position and their movements, one may draw
prognostications, and you are now treading on the most sacred spot on
earth. There Pythagoras and Zoroaster may be met. Two thousand years
have these men been observing the sky, the better to comprehend the
gods."

_Antony_--"The stars are not gods!"